Capitalism has created the objective conditions for Socialism. But it can go no further. It has now become an obstacle in the evolutionary path of humanity and means condemning hundreds of millions of people to poverty, privation and hunger with millions starving to death. Capitalism is now an obsolete system and the next great social task is abolishing capitalism and establishing socialism. Socialist society will abolish the class division of society, i.e., simultaneously with the anarchy in production, it will abolish all forces of exploitation and oppression of man by man. Society will no longer consist of antagonistic classes in conflict with each other, but will represent a united commonwealth of labour. For the first time in its history mankind will take its fate into its own hands. Instead of destroying innumerable human lives and incalculable the wealth of nature, mankind will devote all its energies to the development and strengthening of our own collective social bonds. Future socialist society will be state-free. With private property in industry and land abolished (but, of course, not possessions of personal use), with exploitation of the toilers ended, and with the capitalist class finally defeated and all classes liquidated, there will then be no further need for the State, which in its essence, is an organ of class repression.
The guiding principle will be: “From each according to ability, to each according to needs.” That is, the distribution of life necessities—food, clothing, shelter, education, etc.—will be free, without let or hindrance. Socialist production, carried out upon the most efficient basis and freed from the drains of capitalist exploiters, will provide such an abundance of necessary commodities that there will be plenty for all with a minimum of effort.
The implications of all this are clear: to escape the capitalist misery and to emancipate ourselves, the workers of the world must take the revolutionary route. Although the world capitalist system constantly plunges into crisis after crisis we cannot conclude that it will collapse of its own contradictions. Capitalism, by its very nature, is a prolific breeder of crime. It is a system of legalized robbery of the working class. The whole process of capitalist business is a swindle. The record of every large fortune and big corporation in this country is smeared not only with brutal robbery of the workers but also statutory crime of every description, from the bribery of legislatures to plain manslaughter. It is a society where each grabs what one can at the expense of the rest. It is not surprising that in a system of society where the aim is to get rich by any means, crime of every kind should flourish. Faced by low wages and other impossible economic conditions on the one hand and by the corrupt example of capitalism generally on the other, many naturally take to lives of open crime and try to emulate the capitalist “big shots” who steal through exploiting the workers, by cheating on the stock exchange, or by corrupting the government. Capitalism blames crime upon the individual, instead of upon the bad social conditions which produce it. Hence its treatment of crime is essentially one of punishment. Capitalist prisons are actually schools of crime.
Socialism will put a stop to the whole series of capitalist corruption, waste and theft. Ending the gigantic robbery which is the very base of the capitalist system will at once release vast resources for useful social ends. A socialist system will greatly increase the productive forces and production itself. It does away with economic crises. There is no capitalist class to demand its profit before production and distribution take place. Unemployment, with its terrible misery and suffering, will become a thing of the past. The many millions who now walk the streets unemployed will have fruitful work to do, to the benefit of all society. It will liquidate the hundreds of useless and parasitic occupations. A main task will be to make the cities liveable. This will involve not only the wholesale destruction of the slum housing that millions of workers now call homes, but the building over of the congested capitalist cities into spacious neighbourhoods and communities. These will develop towards the decentralisation of industry and population, the breaking down of the differences between city and country.
With the deadly limitations of the capitalist market removed, the road will be opened to virtually unlimited expansion of industry and increased consumption. Socialism will result in an enormous increase in industrial and agricultural efficiency. The socialist system of planned production, based upon common ownership of industry and the land, is incomparably more efficient than the anarchic capitalist system founded upon private property, competition and the exploitation of the workers. Socialism will wipe out these great wastes, inherent in the unplanned, competitive capitalist system. Socialism will also conserve the natural resources of our planet which are now being ruthlessly wasted in the mad capitalist race for profits. War, with all its agonies and social costs will end. All these revolutionary measures will provide the material foundation for the well-being of the planet’s population, quite unknown previously. The aim of the whole industrial machine will be to raise to the highest possible standards the welfare of working people, and not for the benefit of the few capitalists. The needs of the people and the possibilities of the industries will be carefully studied and met through a thoroughly organised production system.
The whole basis and organisation of capitalist science will be revolutionized. Science will become materialistic, hence truly scientific; God will be banished from the laboratories as well as from the schools. Science will be fully integrated and coordinated and will work according to plan; instead of the present individualistic hit-or-miss scientific dabbling, there will be a great organisation of science.
Socialism the machine will be used on the broadest scale possible to produce the necessities of life in the great industries, transport systems and communication services. It would be the sheerest nonsense and quite impossible not to take advantage of every labour and time-saving device. Where creativity is not checked by poverty and wage-slavery, where the arts and sciences are not hamstrung by the profit-making motive, where the people are not poisoned by anti-social codes of behaviour and ethics, and where every assistance of the free community is given to cultivate of the intellectual and artistic powers of the masses—there we need have no fear that society will be robotised by the machine. The world will become a better place well worth living in. The overthrow of capitalism and the development of socialism will bring about the immediate or eventual solution of many great social problems. Some of these originate in capitalism, and others have plagued the human race for scores of centuries. The objective conditions, in the shape of scientific knowledge and the means of creating material wealth, are already at hand in sufficient measure to do away with these menaces to humanity.
Socialism, by abolishing the capitalist system, releases thereby productive forces strong enough to provide plenty for all and it destroys the whole accompanying capitalist baggage of cultivated ignorance, strife and misery. Socialism will free humanity from the stultifying effects of the present essentially animal struggle for existence and opens up before it new horizons of joys.
The day is not so far distant when our children, immersed in this new life, will look back with horror upon capitalism and marvel how we tolerated it so long.
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